Death of Mrs. P. A.

Morris Link With MH and Early Fiji

WHEN Mrs. P. A.. Morris, aged over 70, died in Sydney early in March, a link with the pioneering days of Fiji was severed. She was a daughter of Mr.

Alexander Eastgate, an Englishman, who went from New Zealand to Fiji in 1870, to grow cotton, and later settled in Levuka as a Government Magistrate.

In Levuka, Miss Eastgate met and married Mr. Percy Atherton Morris, who was bom in the United States in 1868 and educated in Sydney, and who became a trader in Levuka in 1891, when he was 23 years old.

Also in Levuka at that time was young John Maynard Hedstrom, son of the Levuka harbourmaster, and not long returned from Melbourne University. Mr.

Hedstrom, in 1895, married Miss Grace Eastgate, a sister of Mrs. Morris.

The brothers-in-law became partners in the firm of Morris Hedstrom & Co., which in 1902 took over the old-established business of R. Bentley & Co., and also that of Brown, Joske and Hedstrom. Thus was laid in Levuka the foundation of Morris Hedstrom, Ltd., the biggest mer cantile institution in the Central Paci fic, at the head of which is still one of the founders, Sir Maynard Hedstrom.

The new firm grew and flourished, and its headquarters were moved to Suva.

About 1915, Mr. Morris retired from active business life, and he and his wife with two sons and one daughter, settled down in Sydney, where they have lived ever since.

There were six Eastgate girls, and three of them (Mrs. Morris, the late Lady Hed strom, and the late Mrs. H. E Snell) married into the Morris Hedstrom con cern. Those three now are dead; but the other three still are living in Auckland.

Two of their brothers are residents of Fiji.